Novelist Visits Ex-Crown Prince

Hawera Star, Volume L, 17 May 1930, Page 11

Novelist Visits Ex-Crown Prince

“Anxious to Avoid War”

M-R EDGAR WALLACE, during a recent visit to Berlin, dined with the German ex-Crown Prince, and his impressions of a war personality about whom so many stories have been told, as recounted in the “Daily Mail,” are interesting. If you arc a public man and you wear your hair brushed back from your forehead, nothing is more certain than that the caricaturist will draw you with a forehead that slopes back to a point of imbecility. The man who received me in the charming ante-room of a beautiful private house somewhere near the Tiergarten has grey hair dressed this way. He has a high forehead, keen, intelligent, eyes with a peculiar and attractive expression, a strong, keen, clean-shaven face, and the slim figure of a boy. Under his white dress tie was the blue cross of the Order Pour le Meritc with a broad black and white ribbon. On his dress coat one star glittered—l imagine it was the Black Eagle—and beneath that an Iron Cross.

“One day I am a malignant commander directing the destruction of cathedrals, the next day- I. am the merest figure-head with no active control, but Holding a command in an army because I am the heir of an emperor. In one newspaper I am living in luxury beyond the reach of guns and bombing airplanes, my life one saturnalia after another; in another I am behind the front line directing operations. This paper .makes me a figure of fun, that one a vicious ogre. “In one book the war was made because the Emperor feared my contemptuous smile if he did not go forward! I sit in the Reichstag listening to the debates with that same contemptuous smile. I am intriguing on the eve of war—a German Machiavclli —manoeuvring’ Austria into a position from which she cannot recede. “The truth is—and it is so well known in Germany that what. I say will sound trite to German ears—that scarcely one man in Germany was more anxious to avoid -war than I, and nouodv was quite so helpless v to prevent it.”

Ho greeted me in w'ell-nigh perfect English. He looks at you straightly, inquiringly; he is very ready to smile; he has a sense of humour.

He lit a thin cigarette with a tiny straw mouthpiece. “Propaganda! Sometimes a deadly, insidious weapon. It changes the very character and appearance of a man, supplies him with motives of which he. has never dreamt, turns his most innocent amusements into vices, creates around him a poisoned atmosphere. I once saw a so-called ‘authentic' drawing of me sitting at a table surrounded by empty champagne bottles —it was entirely imaginary, for I drink very little and never in the daytime.” He laughed; he has a very infectious laugh; one finds oneself smiling in sympathy. He. is singularly well read, reads every book on social problems that ’s written in English or German. Ho has always been a good mixer. The members of the regimental messes who met him in India will testify to this. The time in India is, by the way, a very pleasant memory for him.

Skilful propaganda has caricature 1 him so effectively that it comes almost as a shock to find—far from all those caricatures—how simple and human a man he is. You see him occasionally in Berlin, at the theatre and sport. “I saw ‘Journey’s End’ four times. The man who wrote that knows the front line! The friendliness, the brutality of it! I have seen Sha-w’s play four times. AVe call it the ‘Kaiser von Amerika’; in England it is called ‘The Apple Cart,’ isn’t it? Shaw is really wonderful! Ho would be the first to admit it.” I talked very sketchily about the war, more fully about. Germany and its future, of politics not. at all. “I get a certain amount, of amusement out of reading journalistic comments about, myself published during the war, and especially in reading those pseudo-historical works the authors of which are so convinced of their 1 profound knowledge of the psychology of war generals! ’ ’ I

“What good boys they were, those English soldiers I met day after day!

Amused at Newspaper Comments

And how perfectly splendid they were to me! I returned from India a pronounced admirer of England. 1 have always been very fond of the late King Edward, who was always very kind to me, and invited me over several times. 1 spent some time in Scotland. What a beautiful country—one of the most lovely in Europe! The Englishman who admits he doesn’t know Scotland should be ashamed of himself. I want to go to Englanu some day, and my oleasure at being there will compensate for the fact that this time 1 go there as a private citizen. ‘‘ I never nad any illusions about England after she came into the war. I know the character of her people. I When one of our generals doubted the military value of tne nation, I predicted -exactly the number that Great Brii tain and* her dependencies would put ' into the field. ” | He talked for a long time of the personal losses ho had sustained, j ‘ • Most of my best friends were killed in the first years of the war. That is I the horrible experience of every country. So many of the best men of the I nation go out in the first battles. Some |of the sights I saw I shall never forI get. Nivelle’s attack in 1917 was one of them. So many French soldiers died before the lines held by my army on the Chemin des Dames.” He told me that it was very raxely that he had British troops on his front. The British were farther north. All connections between the German and other princely families weie broken off during me war and have never been resumed. ”1 never realised how odd the situation was until the illness of King George. Von were in Germany at the time —L believe I heard you were—and vou know how impressed were all classes of the German people, and how hourly bulletins were issued as they were published in Eondon. I was, as I say, very fond of King Edward. King George .1 hn.ve unfortunately met- only rarely. During his severe illness I wanted to write, expressing my concern and sympathy, but there was nobody to whom I could write so that my sympathy would be comprehended.” j